Statistical analysis of the stability of bus vehicles based on GPS trajectory data

Abstract

High quality bus service is considered as an efficient way to mitigate traffic congestion in big cities. Global positioning system (GPS) data provide sufficient sources to evaluate the performance of bus vehicles that both passengers and operator concern about. This paper aims to propose a framework to assess the operational performance of bus routes based on the GPS trajectory data collected from Jinan, China. Several important indicators of bus operation including travel time of routes, section running time, dwell time and bus bunching have been studied. The results show that the travel time of routes follow right skewed distributions. Moreover, section running time between two consecutive stations varies in different time period and it is larger in evening peak hours. Additionally, the dwell time has been discussed and the results show that there is no big variation in most stations except some stations, which provides a help to identify the key stations. Furthermore, we propose an approach to detect the bunching points. The results indicate the bunching points are easy to occur in the peak hours and the congested road section.